The Right allow the plebs to have big TVs and SKY, and then demonise them for having it. Neat trick.

Sure, but pleb-demonization is not an exclusively right-wing sport. Witness the outpourings of post-Referendum rage from metropolitan socialists and liberals at the great unwashed white provincial working classes, who clearly should never have been given a say in the first place and should probably be kept in designated kennels of some kind where a responsible adult can keep an eye on them and make sure they don't cause any more trouble.

Other than that, (some of) the Right have understood that technological advances have masked much of the entrenching of inequality. I remember life before mobile phones, hell I remember when there was no Channel 4. You can argue that such stuff does not make a better quality of like maketh, but you're not going to be taken very seriously by many. Of course, the Right like to downplay the role of the (US Military) state in the development of much of this, but my Moto-G is still very much the product of late global capitalism and I like it. The Right allow the plebs to have big TVs and SKY, and then demonise them for having it. Neat trick.

I think this is OTM, insofar as I find it hard to accept that people living in poverty in the UK are not better off than they would be living in poverty in India, say, and that's because I assume they still have access to clean water, heating, and even TVs/phones. It's easy to assume that society as a whole is affluent because of these gizmos (and relative to other countries, the UK is affluent, one assumes). I was reading Terry Eagleton's 'Why Marx Was Right' recently, and he made me feel properly ashamed of myself for holding the belief (which he criticises, of course) that the developed nations are simply in the advanced stages of a process that the rest of the world will go through, meaning that one day we will all be affluent, or free from starvation, etc. And the same goes for the political system in, say, the UK - liberal democracy being the best possible system of social organisation.

Of course, on a global scale, all this affluence actually depends on the poverty of millions, and is creating an ecological catastrophe which will drag the whole world into the mire.

Though I'm too much of a self-doubting person to become a fervent believer in left-wing principles, it did strike me the other night that the right wing (i.e. anyone from the tories to combat 18) are the enemy of what I think society should be like. I often feel rather ashamed that I've never been on a political march or protest, believing them to be fairly ineffectual, but also most fundamentally because I can't be bothered and/or I'm scared to face riot police.

You're wrapping yourself in knots trying to justify something absurd. I don't recognise the "reflexive defence" you've made up there - I just think it's the age old story that people don't want to look too hard at anything that implicates them or suggests that they could in some way be 'a bad person'. And that drive unites an awful lot of people, not just people who are 'nasty bigots', but those who are opportunist populists (my comment about media folk) and a huge mass of people who adopt this kind of 'Faux Reasonablist' view of "come on, we've thought enough about things like racism and homophobia and sexism. Any more thinking is just absurd, what do they want, the end of racism?! And besides, it's making me feel a bit bad about myself now". And they would rather flee from any iota of a suggestion that they might be a 'bad person' (perish the thought!) than take seriously other people's complaints of oppression, systemic racism (which after all is what cultural appropriation is part of) etc. Because it's easier.

You've completely missed my point. I'm not talking about intention - I mean what proportion of people, if asked in the street, would say racism and sexism are good things? - but about the concrete consequences of people's actions. Questions that take a bit of thinking about, such as "Will sharing this infantile infographic about refugees, full of specious reasoning and numbers and facts that could be complete bullshit for all I know, help reduce racism?" or "Will joining in this furious Twitter campaign to make this guy I've never heard of lose his job because he allegedly said something which, shorn of all context, could arguably be interpreted as sexist, help reduce sexism?".

Living inside your social-media echo chamber, dismissing out of hand any information that doesn't fit with your pre-existing worldview and mindlessly parroting everything your right-on friends say for fear that they might suspect you of not being right-on - now that is the easy option.

Originally Posted by baboon2004

I really don't understand what your investment is here in denying that cultural appropriation exists.

Oh come on mate, do me a favour. As I already said a few posts ago:

Originally Posted by Mr. Tea

On the subject cultural appropriation in particular: I think it's obvious that it's a real thing, or at least can be

Originally Posted by baboon2004

I don't know what you're trying to say in the second paragraph, tbh. What 'hysterical irreason' and 'moral relativism' are you referring to? And what kinds of ideology?

OK, a few examples totally off the top of my head.

Hysterical irreason: Feminist groups who insist that men who oppose male circumcision must somehow be in favour of FGM, and must therefore be vigorously pilloried as vile misogynists. Or the Swedish MP who said it's morally worse for a Swedish man to rape a Swedish woman than for a Muslim immigrant to do so. Or look up 'donglegate' if you haven't heard of it. Seriously, I could go on all day.

Moral relativism: see pretty much anything Seumas Milne has ever written. People who can't accept that a country other the USA or Israel might be behind anything bad in the world and reflexively ascribe Russian attacks on Syrian hospitals (for example) to "false flag operations". People (hello zhao!) who can't even wait till the emergency response teams have finished picking up the bits of human offal following the latest jihadi bombing somewhere in Europe to start banging on about how it's all our fault, because Iraq. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Edit: I guess this is subject-creep from 'things the Right gets right' to 'things the Left gets wrong', but the two are related.

Hysterical irreason: Feminist groups who insist that men who oppose male circumcision must somehow be in favour of FGM, and must therefore be vigorously pilloried as vile misogynists.

.

hmmm, not too up on this issue but... why do I get the feeling that this is less about 'hysterical feminists', and more about MRAs insisting that male circumcision is 'just as bad' as FGM and getting the kicking they deserve?

You've completely missed my point. I'm not talking about intention - I mean what proportion of people, if asked in the street, would say racism and sexism are good things? - but about the concrete consequences of people's actions. Questions that take a bit of thinking about, such as "Will sharing this infantile infographic about refugees, full of specious reasoning and numbers and facts that could be complete bullshit for all I know, help reduce racism?" or "Will joining in this furious Twitter campaign to make this guy I've never heard of lose his job because he allegedly said something which, shorn of all context, could arguably be interpreted as sexist, help reduce sexism?".

Living inside your social-media echo chamber, dismissing out of hand any information that doesn't fit with your pre-existing worldview and mindlessly parroting everything your right-on friends say for fear that they might suspect you of not being right-on - now that is the easy option.

Oh come on mate, do me a favour. As I already said a few posts ago:

OK, a few examples totally off the top of my head.

Hysterical irreason: Feminist groups who insist that men who oppose male circumcision must somehow be in favour of FGM, and must therefore be vigorously pilloried as vile misogynists. Or the Swedish MP who said it's morally worse for a Swedish man to rape a Swedish woman than for a Muslim immigrant to do so. Or look up 'donglegate' if you haven't heard of it. Seriously, I could go on all day.

Moral relativism: see pretty much anything Seumas Milne has ever written. People who can't accept that a country other the USA or Israel might be behind anything bad in the world and reflexively ascribe Russian attacks on Syrian hospitals (for example) to "false flag operations". People (hello zhao!) who can't even wait till the emergency response teams have finished picking up the bits of human offal following the latest jihadi bombing somewhere in Europe to start banging on about how it's all our fault, because Iraq. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Edit: I guess this is subject-creep from 'things the Right gets right' to 'things the Left gets wrong', but the two are related.

Absolving some people of responsibility because 'what do you expect?' and treating others as completely free & responsible moral agents is pretty much involved in any kind of moral system. Not sure where relativism comes into it; it does feel like a snarl word here and little else.

Absolving some people of responsibility because 'what do you expect?' and treating others as completely free & responsible moral agents is pretty much involved in any kind of moral system. Not sure where relativism comes into it; it does feel like a snarl word here and little else.

Who here is actually a moral absolutist?

I'm a moral universalist.

You could argue that liberals, in believing that all consensual acts are good, are moral absolutists.

I would suggest that would normally be how a libertarian is defined, though between the Libertarian Party being increasingly non-voluntarist and much of the internet crowd going Pepe, there aren't many of those left.

The non-aggression principle is superficially charming, but falls apart pretty quickly upon analysis. I think somebody said it's a bit like Scientology - starts off fluffy, then before you know it you are believing in all sorts of nonsense.

It's certainly the case that sections of the left -- particularly the campus left in America -- seem to be abandoning universalism for some strange new mutant strain. Maybe it's not so important, but then again maybe it's the ideology that (after these students grow up and assume positions of power and influence) will dominate the mainstream in twenty years time.

I agree that the non-aggression principle isn't ultimately very compelling, but it's not so far from the basic tenet of contemporary liberalism (which has perhaps fused with libertarianism in some ways). Liberalism is about the autonomy of the individual and the primacy of his desires and perspectives. Without the non-aggression principle (or something like it), it's easy to see how this could stray into Stirnerism or outright fascism.

Sure, but pleb-demonization is not an exclusively right-wing sport. Witness the outpourings of post-Referendum rage from metropolitan socialists and liberals at the great unwashed white provincial working classes, who clearly should never have been given a say in the first place and should probably be kept in designated kennels of some kind where a responsible adult can keep an eye on them and make sure they don't cause any more trouble.

Totally spot on. And after witnessing the crywank carnival that was the day after Brexit, I am totally done with the left. Well, until Bob Crow Brigade returns to give anyone who says "We need to talk about..." a good kicking.

Why weren't all you SJWs anti-white rasta when Spiral Tribe were on the go? Talk about missed opportunities.

I agree that the non-aggression principle isn't ultimately very compelling, but it's not so far from the basic tenet of contemporary liberalism (which has perhaps fused with libertarianism in some ways). Liberalism is about the autonomy of the individual and the primacy of his desires and perspectives. Without the non-aggression principle (or something like it), it's easy to see how this could stray into Stirnerism or outright fascism.

Yes, but now we're into people believing in 'principles' for consequences - at which point they're not really principles, and we're into that relativist popomo quagmire before you know it.